Washington Insider

The Supreme Court finished three days of oral arguments on the 2010 health care law on Wednesday, leaving pundits and politicians alike puzzling over what the outcome might be.
Many observers saw the arguments as a blow to the law. But others point out that oral arguments often have little persuasive effect on the justices’ decisions.

The 2008 Farm Bill expires on Sept. 30, and some longtime observers of Congress consider the fate of the bill a drop-dead test of Congress’s modern-day dysfunction.
With rural Democrats a scarce commodity, the built-in opportunities for bipartisanship on legislation like the farm bill have dissipated. And the bill’s huge scope – from nutrition to trade – means there are innumerable potential flashpoints.

In a rare burst of election-year bipartisanship, a two-year, $109 billion surface-transportation bill sailed through the Senate this week, 74-22. The only problem: No one is certain what the House is going to do—and time is running out.

President Obama hosted his first press conference of the year on Tuesday, neatly timed to coincide with the Republican Party’s histrionic Super Tuesday. Obama fielded questions on everything from the GOP race to the Rush Limbaugh controversy (though interestingly, nothing on the economy). But his topline answers came on foreign policy.

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) insisted this week that a stalled transportation bill that has been languishing in the House is not yet dead, and that a scaled-down version that had been talked about is even less likely to garner support. But time may be running out, either way.

The transportation bills’ path to law appeared circuitous at best this week, while Congress left on a week-long break without taking final action on the matter, leaving lingering questions in both chambers. Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) delayed a final vote while acknowledging that rounding up votes from his caucus had been made more difficult because the legislation did not include sweeteners that have adorned bills past – the infamous earmarks.

While much of the tax debate has focused on wealthy Americans, a new discussion focuses on this startling statistic: 51 percent of U.S. households, roughly 35.5 million people, pay no federal income taxes. The number can be laid at the feet of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), according to National Journal's Nancy Cook.

In the most cooperative political climate, a president’s budget filing is greeted as suitable fodder for Capitol Hill fireplaces. The document President Obama filed on Monday, working off a $3 trillion-plus deficit-reduction blueprint released last year, may not meet even that standard. Obama presses ahead on his election-year themes: clean-energy spending, reinforcement of his crackdown on Wall Street, and higher taxes on the wealthy as part of his economic-fairness argument.

Legislation intended to block members of Congress and their staffs from insider trading and calling for internal ethics panels to enforce the ban moved forward in the Senate on Monday. Spurred by a November "60 Minutes" report on potential insider trading by members, the STOCK Act is geared toward cutting off lawmakers from drawing on non-public information for profit. But the Senate effort is encountering some resistance from House Republican leadership, which says it wants a more stringent version.

While other websites were going dark earlier this month to protest online piracy legislation, KeepTheWebOpen.com was lighting up. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), <i>(pictured in foreground)</i>, is using crowdsourcing to gauge public opinion and gather suggested edits to the text of his online piracy bill.

The House and Senate Agriculture committees face time and funding constraints as they work to produce a multi-year farm bill that will revamp farm-support programs, consolidate conservation programs and affect nutrition policy — while also cutting mandatory spending.

With less than 10 months to go before the 2012 election, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) can see a path to becoming majority leader. It will involve pragmatism, occasional compromise and careful choices about when to fight with the Democrats. In the House, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has the majority, but he does not appear to have the luxury of picking his fights. And that’s where McConnell’s goal meets Boehner’s headache.

In a divided Congress, with one chamber’s majority in basic agreement with White House policy and the other vehemently opposed, Congress assumed a split personality on many pivotal votes in the first session of the 112th Congress. The result was that many votes in 2011 carried only symbolic weight.

Over the past 12 months, Congress has reduced federal spending by about $47 billion, spread over two appropriations cycles. One of the first groups to feel the pain of the spending cuts are the nation’s mayors, who already have begun to receive less of the federal grant money that helps them run many programs in their cities and towns.

At the beginning of last year, newly elected House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) accepted a large gavel from Democrat Nancy Pelosi (CA) and laid out a vision for how things would be different under his leadership. At year’s end, Boehner conducted a brief call...